Knowledge Management (KM) has adapted this content and implementation of KCS based on Consortium for Service Innovation KCS v6. The KM team has level 1 certifications in KCS issued by the Consortium for Service Innovation.
The journey begins
As cliché as it is to say, Implementing KCS is a journey. KM's own journey is still in progress. This training is focused only on the essential elements needed to get your KCS program operational. You can build on this training by reading through the consortium's comprehensive guide to KCS. We recommend at least one person on your team obtain a KCS fundamentals certification if possible.
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Core components of KCS
We don't have time to cover the core KCS concepts in depth but we'll highlight the key points.
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KCS articles use specific templates
- KM uses Standard, How to, Issue & Solution, and Question & Answer templates.
- The templates help ensure articles are structured in a way that makes them quick to publish and easy to find.
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Articles don't have to be polished to be published
- Customers don't really care if articles have odd grammar or misspelled words so long as the knowledge helps them. These articles are labeled Not Validated in the confidence field and come with a brief caveat notice.
- You can review articles when time allows. KM reviews every new article to correct editorial issues and improve knowledge accuracy. These reviewed articles have the Validated confidence field.
- You can determine who can and can't create or promote articles to Validated confidence. Our new Service Desk student agents can only publish Not Validated articles.
- Reviews and updates are based and scored on a content standard called Article Quality Index (AQI). For now, that's more of a KM team activity though you can score your team's articles.
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Let articles be demand-driven
- Use as much of the customer's own words as possible. Pull from incidents, emails, and conversations.
- Don't write KCS articles to predict customer issues. Use the IT Support for that purpose.
- Just in time vs just in case.
- Just in case answer (Version 1.0)
- The question or resolution is not in the title, meta description, and likely metadata (unless it's bloated).
- The resolution is buried.
- The section where the resolution is, isn't using the customer's words to describe the feature.
- Customers might not think of this as a "Rename" like Zoom calls it.
- This all leads to not being found by customers and attached by agents.
- Just in time answer
- Corrects all the problems with Just in case.
- There's value in creating smaller articles from larger articles.
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Other considerations
- Avoid article duplication.
- "Search early, search often" before writing a new article.
- Essential roles are Candidates (publish Not Validated articles) and Contributors (publish validated articles.
- Create an article from INC form or agent workspace.
- Link to vendor documentation.
- Search articles.
- tst-itsupport.umd.edu to play around safely in TST.
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Creating KCS articles
Template location
- From ServiceNow Agent View, select All.
- Search for articles in the filter navigator.
- Select Create New.
- Select IT Support. This is the Service Desk's only public facing Knowledge Base.
- Select from the available templates: Standard, How To, Issue & Solution, or Question & Answer template.
- Select the Next button.
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Templates
Standard
The Standard article template is mostly used for policy or announcement type articles.
- Short Description. Phrase to describe the article. Can take on more formal tone.
- Article Body. Articles contents. Styling and formatting is usually necessary with this template.
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How To
- Short Description. How to + Task to complete.
- Introduction. Explanation of the task trying to be completed with the article.
- Instructions. A brief set of steps on how to complete the task.
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Issue & Solutions (the default KCS form)
Articles created from incidents with the Create Knowledge button use this template.
- Short Description. Avoid questions. Use the Issue field to create a searchable phrase.
- Issue. Symptom, problem, or question. The issue is described in the requestor's words and phrases. It must represent the requestor's perspective and context.
- Environment. What products, categories, or business processes does the requestor have? The environment description should be as precise as possible.
Example: Zoom iOS Mobile App
- Resolution. The answer or the steps taken to resolve the issue.
- Cause (Optional Field) Example: Zoom update required to start a Webinar.
- Internal Resolution. Viewable only by DIT agents. It's best to keep all knowledge in one place instead of segregating internal knowledge in the DIT Internal knowledge base.
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Questions & Answers
Articles made with the Question and Answer template are used in Virtual Agent conversations.
- Short Description. Same functionality and purpose as the other template.
- Question. The question was asked in the requestor's words.
- Answer. Essentially the same as Resolution.
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Confidence field
- Work in Progress (WIP)
- The article does not include a resolution
- WIPs inform other knowledge workers that the issue is being worked on
- WIPs are temporary. Generally, they should become either Not Validated or Validated, or they should be deleted.
- Not Validated
- This is a complete article that is externally visible, but the article author's role is a KCS Candidate meaning their resolution cannot be verified immediately.
- not confident due to lack of feedback, others' use of the article, or needing to be formatted properly.
- Articles are reviewed weekly based on their view count and usage by agents.
- Validated
- Complete and reusable
- KCS Contributors or Publishers can validate articles.
- An article is validated as long as it meets the views threshold and meets the Content Standard Checklist.
- Archived
- Articles that do not receive enough views or receive repeated negative feedback are archived
- Archived articles can be brought back by request.
- Retirement.
- Article is wrong, flagged, and archived.
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States
- Draft
- Under Review
- Articles only come under review when the articles are Compliance based, and the author is not a member of the Ownership Group.
- An article's confidence is still Work in Progress in this state.
- Published
- The article is searchable and externally public.
- An article's confidence is either Validated or Not-Validated in this state.
- Retired
- The article is no longer searchable or viewable to the public. It is only available to KM.
- An article's confidence is Archived in this state.
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Governance field
- Experience based
- All agents can check out and edit the article.
- Compliance based
- Requires an Ownership group in order to be published.
- Only those in the Ownership group, the author, and KM can edit the article after it is published.
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Article style
Bullets and numbering, in the form of ordered and unordered lists, should be used to delineate a variety of content within knowledge articles.
Ordered lists
Ordered lists should be used to delineate:
- Steps taken to achieve an action (numbered).
- Sub-steps within a series of steps (lettered).
Steps within ordered lists must be single-spaced.
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Unordered lists
Unordered lists should be used for:
- Features associated with a system or service.
- Lists of form fields.
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Images
- Use alternative text (the <alt> tag) to describe images, graphics and pictorial data.
- Select the image you would like to add alt text to.
- Select the image icon in the Text editor.
- Enter a description in the Alt Text field.
- If an image is solely decorative, set the alt attribute to "" when using HTML.
- Select the image you would like to add alt text to.
- Select the source code icon (<>) in the Text Editor menu.
- Find the alt attribute in the <img> tag
- Set alt="".
<img src="blahblah.jpg" alt="" border="1".../>
- Select Ok.
- The <fig> and <figcaption> can be used around an image to provide an onscreen text explanation of the image.
- First surround the <img> with the <figure> tag then add a caption under the <img> tag with the <figcaption> tag. Example:
- <figure>
<img src="img.jpg" alt="description of image"></img>
<figcaption>This is the image caption</figcaption>
</figure>
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KCS examples